Phosphene

any video, as your real macOS wallpaper ・ on the desktop and the lock screen

A signed, notarized disk image · free and open source (MIT)

the menu bar ・ preview, pause, switch displays your library ・ import, inspect, and optimize your videos

macOS doesn't let you use your own videos as wallpaper. The desktop only takes stills, and the lock screen only plays Apple's approved Aerials. Phosphene removes that limit: it's a menu bar app + wallpaper extension that adds any video you like to System Settings → Wallpaper — as its own collection, selectable for the desktop and the lock screen exactly like a built-in.

There's no floating window pretending to be a wallpaper. Phosphene plugs into Apple's private WallpaperExtensionKit framework — the same wallpaper pipeline Apple's own Aerials use — which means playback runs out-of-process, survives app quits, works on the real lock screen, and integrates with the OS-level lock / idle / sleep lifecycle.

Private framework. Phosphene loads WallpaperExtensionKit via dlopen and uses Mirror-based runtime introspection to talk to its XPC types. Apple could change this at any major OS release. Validated on macOS 26 and 27.

Features

• Bring your own videos. Import MP4 / MOV / any AVFoundation-readable file. They show up in the system wallpaper picker.
• Gapless looping. Frame-accurate loops by offsetting PTS/DTS across loop boundaries — no flush, no stutter.
• Multi-display + per-Space selections. Different wallpapers per display, persisted by macOS.
• Power-aware playback. A graduated PlaybackPolicy reduces work or pauses entirely based on thermal state, battery level, on-battery vs AC, Game Mode, and presentation mode (active / locked / idle).
• Smooth lock-screen ramp. When Only on Lock Screen is enabled, the wallpaper eases in/out with a cubic curve as you lock and unlock, matching Apple's own Aerials behavior.
• Pause when occluded. Detects when every display is fully covered by windows and pauses rendering until the desktop is visible again.
• Adaptive variants. Optionally pre-render lower-resolution / lower-fps variants of a video; the renderer swaps to the cheapest variant that satisfies the current policy at each loop boundary.
• Menu bar control. Preview the current wallpaper, toggle pause, switch displays, configure behavior, launch at login.